Welcome back to the place we find ourselves podcasts. I'm Adam Young and today we are going to talk about how God designed your nervous system.

This is very important to understand because your nervous system kind of runs your life.

And the most important thing you have to understand about your nervous system is that it is organized around one thing.

Feeling safe.

Feeling safe. Which means that you are fundamentally driven by an attempt to survey your environment and determine how safe it is.

Now, when most people hear this, they hear it as if a lion walked around the corner my brain would immediately say danger, danger. And that's true.

However, lions don't walk around the corner very often. But people do.

Your spouse does, your partner does, your friends, co-workers, bosses, extended family members. God has designed your nervous system to continually survey your relational environment.

That is your relationships with other people. And the purpose of all this surveying is to answer the simple question, am I safe? Or better said, how safe am I?

Your nervous system comes equipped with an exquisite ability to detect how safe you feel at any given moment. This ability is called neuroception.

Neuroception is a term coined by Stephen Porgis, who is a neuroscientist and today's episode is a summary of some of the key contributions that Stephen Porgis has made to understanding how and why we relate to other people the way we do.

Neuroception is your body's way of constantly surveying the environment for any danger whatsoever.

Neuroception is an ability that you have. And it is very important for you to understand that God has equipped your brain with this ability.

Neuroception is different than perception. When you are perceiving something, say a beautiful sunset, you are aware that you are looking at this beautiful sunset. You know that it's happening.

Neuroception, on the other hand, occurs without conscious awareness.

Neuroception is detection without awareness. It is the way your nervous system takes in information and responds to that information without your awareness.

This is a big deal. This means that your brain is constantly surveying your relational world to assess the level of physical and emotional safety.

And your brain is doing this without you knowing it all the time.

Neuroception occurs automatically in milliseconds and it's always turned on. The important point to remember is that we aren't aware that we are scanning the environment for signals of safety or danger.

We aren't conscious that we are continuously engaged in the process of neuroception. It just happens. Neuroception is an extremely important concept to understand. Why? Because neuroception is a big part of what's driving your interpersonal relationships.

More on that in a moment. Many things can make you feel unsafe. A fight between two people in a public place.

An angry look on your friend's face. A sarcastic tone in your partner's voice. When your body scans the environment and detects anything that feels remotely threatening, it triggers your nervous system to do one of three things.

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